It is important to remember that sound is ultimately a physical medium. Vibrations, emitted through the airwaves collide with surfaces, reflecting and inflecting in a blissfully chaotic interplay before finding their way to our ear drums. It’s here, in this space of reflection, that Simon James Phillips has created Chair. It’s an album of clustered piano works, where notes compound and flutter in a spiraling flow of attack and decay. Using the natural sustain of both his chosen instrument and the recording environment - the Grunewald Church in Berlin - Phillips’ playing draws out the natural harmonic saturation of his subjects. Of the recording Phillips’ notes “My sound engineer Mattef Kuhlmey used numerous microphones, placed in various positions around the church in order to capture not only the sound of the piano, but also how this sound behaved in such a richly resonant environment.”